Folklore Friday: Strange Tales From a Chinese Studio

Hey guys, welcome to Learn Feng Shui, where you'll learn Feng Shui from a classical point of view, taking out the myth and superstition. If you like weekly tips as well as fun folklore tales, you'll enjoy learning Feng Shui with me. Hey guys, welcome to Folklore Friday. I'm excited to bring you some stories from a book called Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio from author Poo Song Ling. Hey guys, three quick announcements.

If you heard the audio clip the other day, you'll know that I'm launching monthly Zoom calls for Feng Shui Club subscribers. I'm really excited about that feature because it's going to be able to kind of hit everybody on their Feng Shui understanding and really focus on how you can use these daily energies. You know at the beginning of the month I talk about monthly energies and I kind of talk about how you can use them. Well each week we'll focus on the upcoming week's energies and we'll look ahead and we'll be able to plan a little bit more and you can actually plan out your Feng Shui adjustments and ask questions and you know understand a little bit more about Feng Shui and I'll have four different sessions, a general session where I you know just talk about the monthly energies, beginner session, intermediate session, and then an advanced session. That's kind of a jam session troubleshooting and talking about advanced Feng Shui, maybe formulas, concepts, and theories.

So I'm excited about that part of it. So announcement number two, go check out the website brand new website that just launched this past week. Previous to this all of my, sorry previous to this all of my podcast information was all house on my consulting page. So I'm excited to present to you this new website. I'll have it linked to below go check that out and just kind of see what it's all about and all the content now will be housed on there and we'll be moving from the consulting website.

So if you haven't signed up for emails go sign up there on that website to be added to the email list. If you're bad about checking emails this is perfect for you. My third announcement is my telegram channel. So in order to have people you know get all the links and announcements and everything that you know that goes with it, I noticed that social media especially Facebook and Instagram. It's really super difficult for everybody to see everything especially if you don't have those notifications turned on or if you're not even following me on social media.

So one thing you can do is go I'll put the link below also to that telegram channel. It's just the learn Feng Shui podcast and I'll be able to bring you you know updates. I promise I won't spam you too much maybe a few times a week and not not even every day guys. So go subscribe to that and that'll also include you in getting any sort of like last minute announcements. Sometimes that actually do some different things with date selection.

I'll notice the dates later on or I'll hear a Feng Shui master say something that day that you know I can I can share with you guys and we can kind of come together on different meditations and stuff like that. So after this super super lengthy announcement let's get on to the show. Hey guys I'm excited to bring you some stories again from the book called Strange Tales from a Chinese studio. I was listening to some podcasts and just kind of shuffling through some things and so I honestly don't remember where I heard it and I wish I could give credit to who you know the podcast that I heard it from. But so I found this book through this podcast in which he told one of the stories is really fun and I thought okay I'm gonna buy that book and I'm gonna go through and I'm gonna find that you know some fun stories for Folklar Friday and so it kind of reminds me of if you remember from probably maybe middle school or high school English the telling of the Canterbury Tales and the author Jeffrey Chaucer.

So some of the stories that are a little bit risky some are silly and some are kind of meant to teach a moral lesson. So I'll probably stick to more of the moral lesson ones and more of the entertaining ones. There's even some ghost stories in there. So again I'll probably actually do a whole podcast on the author whose name is Pusongling because he actually has a fascinating life also. So perhaps I'll revisit Pusongling in the very near future.

But for today let's listen to these tales from the Chinese studio. This story is from one called Growing Pairs. It's tale number 13. A peasant was selling pairs in the market. They were sweet and fragrant and exceedingly expensive.

A talus monk in a tatter cap and rope came baking by the pair of cart vendors cart and a man that told him to be gone. When the monk lingered the vendor began to abuse him angrily but you have hundreds of pairs in your cart return the monk and I'm only asking for one. You would hardly even notice it so why are you getting so angry? On the research the vendor to give the monk one of the less succulent pairs just to be a breed of him. But the man obstinately refused.

A waiter who was serving the customers at a nearby wine stall seeing the scene was threatened to grow ugly. He bought a pair and gave it to the monk who bowed in thanks and turned to the assembled crowd. Meanness he declared is something we monks find impossible to understand. I have some very fine pairs in my own which I would actually like to give you. If you had such fine pairs said one of the crown then why did you not eat them for yourself?

Why did you need to go baking? I need this one for seed was the monk's reply. So saying he held the pair out in front of him and began munching it down until there was only a single seed from its core which he held in one hand while taking down a hoe from his shoulder and making a little hole in the ground. Here he placed the seed and covered it with earth. He now asked for some hot water to sprinkle on it and one of the more enterprising members of the crowd went off and fetched him from a roadside tavern.

The water was sculpting hot but the monk proceeded to pour it on the ground over his seed. The crowd watched riveted as the tiny sprout began pushing its way through the soil growing and growing until it was a fully fledged tree complete with branches and leaves and then it flowered and bore fruit. Great big, fragrant pairs. Every branch was laden with them and the monk now climbed into the tree beginning picking all the pairs handing them down to the crowd and as he did so soon every single pair on the tree had been given away and when this was done he started hacking the tree with his hoe and it fell. So then soldering the tree branches leaves and all he sauntered casually off.

Now from the very beginning of this performance the pair vendor had been standing in the crowd, straining his neck to see what the others were seeing, quite forgetting his trade and what he had come to the market for. Only when the monk had gone did he turn around to see that his own pair cart was empty and he knew that the pairs the monk had passed out were all from his cart and he noticed that his cart was actually missing one of the handles and it had been nearly hacked away. So the peasant flew into a rage and went in hopper's into this monk following him the length of the wall around a corner and there was his cart handle lying discarded on the ground. He knew that once it had served the monk as a paratory. As for the monk himself he had vanished without a trace to the great amazement of the ground.

This story is called the God of Hale and I wanted to include this one just as a little bit of a nod to where I live here in West Texas. We had our first hail storm the other day and it's pretty common around springtime so when I found the story I thought ah perfect. So the God of Hale, Wang Yang Kang, a gentleman from Shang Dong, was posted to the southern region of the Huanong province, initially known as Chu. In Rui he proposed to climb the famous dragon antiger peak and call upon the Taoist heavenly patriarch who was the resident there. He reached the lake and just as he was boarding a boat a man came roaming towards him in a little skiff calling out to the boatman to introduce them.

Even as Wang was sizing the up the man's elegant and somewhat imposing appearance he produced from his gown that he was one of the heavenly patriarchs calling cards so it wasn't a painfully patriotic himself but ah like his go you know his show for his go man right. My master's learned of your imminent arrival and has sent me ahead to welcome you. Wang was astonished and as foreknowledge and of his proposed visit which only increased the sense of reverence toward the Taoist patriarch and fortified his determination to wait upon him. He finally arrived at his destination to finally heavenly patriarch surrounded by his retinue of strangely robe attendance their hair and beards brushed in an antique manner. The patriarch received him most cordially and treated him to a fine banquet.

The man from the skiff also waited on him and after a while Wang inquired as to who he was. He is a fellow-contraiment of yours replied the heavenly patriarch do you not know him. Wang begged to be enlightened. This is Lee Juqi. He whom men call the god of hail.

Well Wang's face fill in sheer astonishment. He is just in front of me continue the heavenly patriarch of a new Raina Hail Commission. He will soon have to take leave of us. Where is he going as Wang to Zhang Ji? I don't know how to say that I think.

Now Zhang Ji was right next to his own native town in Chengdong and Wang immediately got down from his seat and put in a play for his neighbors that they may be spared from the violent hail storm. Unfortunately this decree emanates from the supreme deity of the patriarch. The quantity of hail to be dropped has been exactly predetermined and cannot be altered for personal reasons. Well the patriarch could also see however that Wang was deeply distressed and after pondering the matter for a while he turned and destructed the god of hail to discharge most of his hail stones on the hills and valleys so as to spare the crops. And as you can see he went on I have a guest so would you mind making your departure a little more civilized than normal.

The god left the hall and went out into the courtyard where seconds later a cloud of mist could be seen billowing out from beneath his feet. He hovered above the ground for a minute then lifted off with a massive force reaching first treetop and then roof level. Finally there was an almighty clash of thunder and as he soared into the sky and northwards plates rattled on the tables and the whole building quaked. You mean to say that every time he goes it thunders like that? Guast the aweshot of Wang.

Well just now I actually asked him to tone it down so the heavenly patriarch so he made it leisurely takeoff otherwise he would have zoomed straight up into the air and bang. When Wang eventually took his leave he made note of the date. Later he sent a man to Jane Chi to make inquiries and it transpired on that day that there have been a particularly heavy storm with rain and hail filling the water courses to overflowing but strangely only a few lumps of hail had landed on the fields. I actually particularly like that story because again here in West Texas we get a lot of hail and every year seems like I put out flowers. I have a cherry tree that gives off fruit and I'll be darned if some years it doesn't get beat down with hail and I have nothing so I'm kind of like that story and a little bit partial to it.

Hey if you've activated any funky energy in your home or you feel like your home needs energy boost don't forget to sign up for my free monthly workshop, the Feng Shui Workshop which the topic for April is going to be activating the Sun Noble which calms down energy that's been negatively activated in your space. So if you've been a renovation or you have overly used area or something and you feel like some negative things have happened since then I encourage you to come join me for the webinar. Again it's free for everyone you can sign up via the link below and I will have the topic set for the next three or four months so you're able to kind of look ahead and plan which ones you may want to join. One of those is going to be a Q&A so if you have any questions I will be kind of talking about how to submit those and one of them will be through that telegram app so if you want to ask questions you know I might do a poll or something on there so join me on the day and telegram guys let's do it so there's that and don't forget to check out those features to the Feng Shui Club which will be launching a May. Thanks!

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